Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Maple/Honey Glazed Salmon

You can't really live in the Northwest without being around delicious seafood all the time.  You can barely walk down the street without being accosted by a rainbow trout or be the victim of a wayward salmon jumping into your car every now and again (okay, kidding, but sometimes it feels like it).  My mom makes the very best salmon in the known universe. It's simple but fabulous: lemons, onions, and some special seasonings.  I will post her recipe on here one day very soon.  I decided to google around yesterday and try and find a marinated or glazed version of salmon, mostly because I was reminiscing about this dreamy teriyaki salmon dish I once had on a cruise ship that was the bomb diggity, and I wanted to try and recreate it at home.  After a bit of searching on the interwebs, this is what I found:

Gorgeous glazed salmon served with teriyaki noodles
This recipe was entitled "The Worlds Best (and easiest) Salmon recipe".  I just love when those two words are used together in any context, "best" and "easiest".  What made me want to try this was the many 5-star reviews. After reading all the great comments as well I knew I wanted to try it too.  Hey, did I mention the marinade is only 3 ingredients?  That's right.  Soy sauce, maple syrup (or honey) and minced garlic.  All you need after that is about 12 oz of salmon, a ziplock bag, and an oven or a BBQ.

Three ingredients for a delicious glazed salmon.  Yum!
First, put your salmon in a zip lock bag.  Add 1/2 cup of maple syrup or honey to the bag.  (Note: they do not mean pancake syrup, but real maple syrup).  I used 1/2 cup of honey and 1/2 cup of soy sauce.  Also throw in 2-3 cloves of finely minced garlic.  I just used a big spoonful of my pre-chopped garlic.
 .
  1/2 cup of honey (or maple syrup)                                                           1/2 cup of soy sauce
Next, squish the mixture around and make sure it covers the salmon on both sides.

The 3-ingredient marinade has already added a nice color to the salmon
After that, you want to lay it on a plate and let it marinate in your refrigerator for an hour.  Set a timer for 30 minutes and flip the whole thing over so both sides sit in the marinade for 30 minutes (for a total of 60 minutes).  I read somewhere that if you marinade it more that 60 minutes, the salt in the soy sauce will start to "cook" the salmon.  So remember, just marinade an hour.  

Next the recipe says to pour the marinade and the salmon in to a 9x13 pan and cook in a 350º for 15 minutes or more covered in foil.  I do not like cooking fish in the house because, let's face it, the smell can linger a bit too long.  Instead, we wanted to use our outside BBQ.  Get a small sheet pan and make a little tin foil "boat" to fit inside the pan.  This will hold in the marinade and make it so there is one less pan to clean later.


The tin foil "boat" doesn't have to be perfect, the pan will help it keep it's shape.

Now pour the marinade and the salmon into the pan

Doesn't this look awesome?

Then I handed this lovely piece of fish over to my hubby for the official BBQ duties.  You can put the foil boat directly on the grill if it is sturdy enough, or my hubby ended up just putting the pan on the grill.  We essentially baked the salmon in the BBQ.  If you tried to grill it the regular way, the sweet glaze would burn.  Hubby turned the BBQ to medium low (he had a thermometer in there that read 350º) and cooked it for a little over 15 minutes, until the thickest part of the fish flakes easily with a fork.  When he brought it back in, it looked like this:

honey soy garlic glazed salmon.  My favorite part is the thin parts that soak up the most glaze
 
And this...

holy buckets yum!

and it smelled like this....

A picture for those of you who like thicker slices of salmon

OH that's right, I have not perfected my blog's "smell-o-vision" button yet, but I sure do wish it worked right now.  We served this with some warm, easy to make teriyaki noodles and some "crud-ites" as my hubby calls them (or crudites, the fancy French term for raw veggies and ranch dip)

This seriously made a great dinner!

Of course the real test to any dinner is... will the KIDS eat it?  Well I can say that my kids (who unfortunately will not even touch my mom's fabulous salmon) gobbled this down.  I was shocked actually.  All three.  Eating the same thing... at once.  Wow. Cleaned their plate.  The oldest asked for more.  If I ever get rich enough to have real maple syrup lying around, I will try this marinade using that, but the honey we used worked out really great.  Try this one out yourself and let me know what you think!

No comments:

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...